earlier in the year i was debating where to travel to after i finished work in cape town. i had a few alternative options but when i saw a picture from sossusvlei of the dead trees i knew that i had to go there. it looked like nowhere else i'd been, almost like a place generated on a computer. i'm happy to report that this magical feeling was only amplified when i saw it with my own eyes, it's such a weird and wonderful place. the trees stand in the middle of a dried up salt pan and died hundreds of years ago when the water ran out. this absence of water also meant there wasn't enough moisture for decomposition, so they remain here as skeletons scorched black by the sun.